Reed Anthony, Cowman eBook

An amusing situation developed during the summer of
1881 at Dodge. The Texas drovers formed a social
club and rented and furnished quarters, which immediately
became the rendezvous of the wayfaring mavericks.
Cigars and refreshments were added, social games introduced,
and in burlesque of the general craze of organizing
stock companies to engage in cattle ranching, our
club adopted the name of The Juan-Jinglero Cattle
Company, Limited. The capital stock was placed
at five million, full-paid and non-assessable, with
John T. Lytle as treasurer, E.G. Head as secretary,
Jess Pressnall as attorney, Captain E.G. Millet
as fiscal agent for placing the stock, and a dozen
leading drovers as vice-presidents, while the presidency
fell to me. We used the best of printed stationery,
and all the papers of Kansas City and Omaha innocently
took it up and gave the new cattle company the widest
publicity. The promoters of the club intended
it as a joke, but the prominence of its officers fooled
the outside public, and applications began to pour
in to secure stock in the new company. No explanation
was offered, but all applications were courteously
refused, on the ground that the capital was already
over-subscribed. All members were freely using
the club stationery, thus daily advertising us far
and wide, while no end of jokes were indulged in at
the expense of the burlesque company. For instance,
Major Seth Mabry left word at the club to forward
his mail to Kansas City, care of Armour’s Bank,
as he expected to be away from Dodge for a week.
No sooner had he gone than every member of the club
wrote him a letter, in care of that popular bank,
addressing him as first vice-president and director
of The Juan-Jinglero Cattle Company. While attending
to business Major Mabry was hourly honored by bankers
and intimate friends desiring to secure stock in the
company, to all of whom he turned a deaf ear, but kept
the secret. “I told the boys,” said
Major Seth on his return, “that our company
was a close corporation, and unless we increased the
capital stock, there was no hope of them getting in
on the ground floor.”

In Dodge practical joking was carried to the extreme,
both by citizens and cowmen. One night a tipsy
foreman, who had just arrived over the trail, insisted
on going the rounds with a party of us, and in order
to shake him we entered a variety theatre, where my
maudlin friend soon fell asleep in his seat.
The rest of us left the theatre, and after seeing
the sights I wandered back to the vaudeville, finding
the performance over and my friend still sound asleep.
I awoke him, never letting him know that I had been
absent for hours, and after rubbing his eyes open,
he said: “Reed, is it all over? No
dance or concert? They give a good show here,
don’t they?”